Tuesday, 23 April 2013

The myth that does not go away

I was listening to Radio 5 on Saturday and they were discussing Tony Pulis's fate (before their win at Ha!Ha!) One of the commentators remarked that it was bit like the situation at Charlton, Alan Curbishley had established the club in the Premier League, but the fans wanted to get rid of him so that they could get someone who could take them to the next level. And look what happened, the commentator said.

In fact this was never the view of the vast majority of fans, just of the usual suspects, one or two of whom managed to express their views on 606 which were then taken as representative of the fan base as a whole.

I sense that Curbs felt that he had done all he could at Charlton and wanted a new challenge, hopefully at West Ham. We all know what happened there.

We all knew that Curbs would not stay for ever. The biggest mistake made by the Murray era board was not to invest sufficient effort into succession planning. The result was the curse of Dowie, followed by further errors. Now, with Sir Chris, we are on our way back.

10 comments:

Ed
said...

It strikes me that it is in Curbs' interest to perpetuate this myth, as it makes his record afterwards sound like the fault of ungrateful fans; had his career gone the other way, I'm sure he would have clarified that he was seeking a new challenge...

I still maintain that Curbs was very lucky we never went down under him as we had begun to stagnate massively in those final 18 months or so. He definitely got out at just the right time, in my opinion, both in the sense of retaining the reputation he rightly deserved up to that point, whilst avoiding the inevitable.

The myth that Charlton fans hounded him out the door and deeply regret it is pretty irritating, but not surprising when people don’t know the facts or weren’t watching the team regularly at that point. What most people outside the club won’t know was the signs weren’t great even if he’d stayed.

In the end, of course, nobody knows what would have happened if Curbs had stayed, no more than they could be certain of what would have happened if we’d stuck with Dowie!!!!

Curbs will likely as not never manage again, he has been too long out of the game and like another manager , Martin O'Neill may be seen as past his prime.The decline must inevitably rest with the Board , firstly in not holding Curbs to his contract to allow a succession plan. Secondly, in hiring Dowie and Pardew, neither 'right' for the club. How things might have turned out had they 'closed' Billy Davies?

Wynn -Curbs was a brilliant manager for us but I was not entirely is appointed when the decision to part company was announced. Our Premier stay had been largely one of struggle to earn our place and having managed that we had failed to move to the next level when we sold Scott Parker. I don't blame Curbs for that but I felt he had taken as us far as he could with the resources that were available. He knew that but we all hoped another manager might give us more. The fact that the next four choices didn't doesn't mean it wasn't wrong to try. We might still have gone down with Curbs although it's hard to comprehend him wasting £12m quite so successfully as the Rocket Scientist.

Looking at Curbs in his last few months he looked burnt out, it had been a long struggle for a long time,there's only so long you can juggle the resources we had. I for one wished we could have parted company in better circumstances. I don't blame him for going or the slump towards the end, that was due to lack of resources, not sure if anyone else could have kept us up for so long with the money he had (or lack of it). What was poor was the lack of succession planning and poor choice of manager thereafter.

What happened with Billy Davies is interesting. The talks were meant to continue the next day but he didn't take the room booked for him at the Swallow Hotel (no expense spared) but headed north through the Blackwell Tunnel. He said that the Charlton board were 'nice people', but perhaps they did not have enough money to put on the table. As for Curbs, he has been so picky about where he will go, he is unlikely to manage again. Younger than O'Neill.

Curb's reasons for leaving are stated clearly in his words in his book. He wasn't hounded out, that's drivel. He hadn't enjoyed beating Liverpool and Luton early that 05/06 season - a fact he kept from Murray for months until the contract discussion was mooted, in early 06 Curbs didn't want to commit to extending his contract beyond 07. Murray then quite rightly had to act - a season with a manager who had less than a year to go was too great a risk. A fact that Curbs acknowledges and accepts. There wasn't much succession planning in place because Murray had no reason to 2nd guess Curb's intentions.Who would definitely have done better with the alleged £12M transfer budget that Dowie blew? If we knew that we'd be running a premier league football club, successfully.But hey let's not let the facts get in the way of some good old revisionist grumbling!

My take was and is that Alan Curbishley had got to the end of the road with Charlton. He needed to move on and hence so did the Club. With the benefit of hindsight might he have taken a different view? Who knows.

In any event it's what happened next that turned out to matter most. In addition to the choice of Managers, the Club made two important errors. The first, reflecting an overconfidence stemming from the Club's reputation for sound management, was to separate the roles of Head Coach (Dowie) and Director of Football (Andrew Mills). It's not that this structure is wrong, per se, but because it's not the norm in England it's not easy (for the Board) to manage. In Charlton's case the difficulty was exacerbated by the appointment of a First Team Coach (Les Reed) before Dowie had even arrived. That's very poor management.

The second error is classically ironic. Having decided that the "Continental" approach hadn't worked, the Club appointed a Team Manager, the arrogant, difficult and demanding Pardew, with exactly the kind of personality you need to control. They failed to control him and it was the appalling Pardew, much more than Dowie, who created the Club's financial problems with his ill-judged signings (Andy Gray) and offer of expensive, long-term contracts to very ordinary players (McLeod, Racon)..

About Me

I started supporting Charlton in 1953 when my father took me to a game (my mother came sometimes as well). My father was born in North Woolwich in 1908 and
had been a Charlton supporter since the 1920s when an older cousin took him. He raised the admission fee by looking after horses while deliveries were made. I now live in Leamington in Warwickshire, but remain a season ticket holder, as was my late wife. Visitors to my CAP blog may be confused by this but, as well as being a Charlton supporter, I am expert on the CAP and the political economy of the food chain. I am also a frequent commentator for UK and international print and broadcast media and wire services on British politics, hence my new blog on the subject.